Thursday, November 19, 2015

Foreign policy is not a game for amateurs. If you do not
know the game, the players, the rules and the history you will be easily
outplayed. A notable amateur like Barack Obama, surrounded by other amateurs
cannot take the lead. Beyond his sympathies for Islam, he does not know how to
lead.

One hopes—against hope, it seems-- that Republicans will
nominate a candidate who has some experience in the arena. Conducting foreign
policy takes more than tough talk and blank stares. It also takes more than
debating prowess.

Today, however, the party seems more enamored of candidates
who have no experience with foreign policy and who have never conducted it.
Otherwise it seems to prefer great debaters. A Republican party that has no
respect for experience in government does not look like it is ready to provide
leadership on the world stage.

If the most experience foreign policy hand on the
presidential debate stage is Hillary Clinton, Republicans are in trouble. Even
though the “often confused” Clinton was an abject failure at foreign policy,
she can tout real experience and real knowledge in the field.

One notes that one of the major problems with the Obama administration
is the president’s willingness to accept the advice of a real estate developer.
At times, it seems that Valerie Jarrett is running the country. Be careful
about thinking that real estate developers are naturally qualified to lead the
nation.

With America on the sidelines, France has taken the lead in
the war against ISIS. Obviously, Vladimir Putin has also seized the opportunity
to take charge of the situation in the Middle East.

The Obama administration is calling its policy: “strategic patience.”
This means that it does not know what to do and so has chosen to do nothing. When
it comes to strength, resolution and clear thinking about ISIS, the socialist president
of France is leading the way. I noted the point a few days ago on this blog.

All of
this means that Mr. Hollande has been right to declare war on Islamic State and
order French bombing raids on its capital in eastern Syria. France is still a
militarily capable nation, as it proved when it turned back an al Qaeda
offensive in Mali in 2013. It can do significant damage to ISIS if it increases
the tempo of its current bombing or deploys its Foreign Legion to liberate the
city of Raqqa.

In the old days America put together coalitions to fight in
the Middle East. Now France is taking the lead in coalition building.

As a member state of NATO France would normally want to
invoke Article 5 which states that an act of war committed against one nation
is an attack on all NATO members. Why has it not done so? The Journal
editorializes:

Ben
Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, was oddly noncommittal
on Sunday when he was asked if France should trigger the Article 5
mutual-defense clause of the NATO charter. “That’s a decision for the French to
make,” he said. That seeming reluctance and Mr. Hollande’s decision not to
invoke Article 5 makes us wonder if the Obama Administration quietly told Paris
not to bother. Keep in mind that NATO did invoke Article 5 after 9/11, which
led to Europe’s cooperation with the U.S. against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

In a news analysis the New York Times explains the French
decision. The nuance is slightly different, but the thrust of the argument is
the same:

Mr.
Hollande, under enormous pressure at home after the attacks, is trying to take
the diplomatic initiative. Sensing a chance for rapprochement, he plans to
travel to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Obama, and then to Moscow to
meet with Mr. Putin. Mr. Hollande said on Wednesday that he wants to forge “a
large coalition” to act “decisively” against the Islamic State.

In
pursuing such a coalition, Mr. Hollande was careful not to ask the NATO
alliance to come to France’s defense under Article 5, which obligates members
to aid one another in case of attack. That article has been invoked only once,
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Given
Mr. Obama’s adamant resistance to putting large numbers of American ground
forces in Syria or Iraq, a French diplomat said on Wednesday that Paris was
unwilling to embarrass Mr. Obama by “asking for the impossible.”

Now, things become more complicated. Unable to turn to NATO,
France invoked another treaty obligation, this one with the European Union. The Times offers this analysis:

Instead,
to broaden France’s diplomatic support, Mr. Hollande invoked an unusual article
in the Lisbon Treaty governing the European Union. Article 42.7 states that if
a member is subject to “armed aggression on its territory” other members have
an “obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power”
consistent with their obligations to NATO.

Asked
on Twitter why France invoked the European Union treaty and not the NATO
charter, Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to Washington, wrote that one
reason was “the dialogue with Russia.” The implication was that Russia is
hostile toward NATO and therefore invoking the alliance’s aid might be
provocative toward Moscow.

The
European Union countries voted unanimously to support France, but the treaty
does not commit them to military action and intelligence sharing is already
well developed. No other European country has been willing to confront Islamic
radicalism as the French have, at home and in Mali, Iraq and Syria.

Given the leadership vacuum in NATO, France has asked Russia
for support. The Journal explains:

No
wonder Paris is making overtures for a joint military option with Moscow, which
must be delighted at this opening to renew an old European friendship while
weakening NATO in the bargain. President Obama is missing an opportunity to
help an ally in its hour of need and fortify the larger Atlantic alliance.

Americans
were disappointed in 2003 when French President Jacques Chirac opposed
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What a sad turnabout it would be if a U.S. President
now fails to do all he can to assist a French President as he tries to defeat
another enemy in the Middle East. Until America gets a new Commander in Chief,
Mr. Hollande is the best antiterror leader the West has.

As it happens, David Goldman, aka Spengler, has nominated
Vladimir Putin as the West’s best anti-terror leader:

Russian
President Vladimir Putin is now the leader of the Free World against Islamist
terrorism, directing the efforts of France and Germany and setting terms for
American involvement. Reeling from last week’s massacre in Paris, France lacks
both the backbone and the brute force to avenge itself against ISIS, but in
alliance with Russia it will make a more than symbolic contribution.

In truth, France has shown a great deal of “backbone.” It
does not have the military might that the United States or Russia has, but it
has not acted from weakness. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

French
security forces Wednesday conducted hundreds of antiterror raids and placed
more than 100 suspects under house arrest. Police fought a gun battle in the
Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, which ended when a terrorist detonated her suicide
vest. Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of
Friday’s massacre, was thought to be in the targeted apartment and it wasn’t
clear as we went to press if he was among those killed.

[Since the Journal went to press, the French government has confirmed
that Abaaoud was killed in the assault.]

The Journal believes that France has acted with more resolve
than Goldman was willing to grant:

All of
this means that Mr. Hollande has been right to declare war on Islamic State and
order French bombing raids on its capital in eastern Syria. France is still a
militarily capable nation, as it proved when it turned back an al Qaeda
offensive in Mali in 2013. It can do significant damage to ISIS if it increases
the tempo of its current bombing or deploys its Foreign Legion to liberate the
city of Raqqa.

And yet, France cannot do it alone. And the Obama-led
American government has been AWOL. This provides an entry for Mr. Putin.

Goldman explains:

Russia
is in the position of a a vulture fund, buying the distressed assets of the
Western alliance for pennies on the dollar. Faced with an American president
who will not fight, and his European allies whose military capacity has shrunk
to near insignificance, the Russian Federation seized the helm with the
deployment of a mere three dozen war planes and an expeditionary force of 5,000
men. One searches in vain through diplomatic history to find another case where
so much was done with so little.

True enough, America has dropped its fair share of bombs on
Syria, but its rules of engagement have made them mostly ineffective. Goldman
adds:

Obama’s
reluctance to put American forces on the ground took America out of contention,
along with aerial rules of engagement so risk-averse that only one
in four American sorties against ISIS released it bombs. The Russians
are not squeamish about collateral damage and likely to be far more effective.

Our
military has the resources to shatter ISIS, but political correctness has
penetrated so deep into the Pentagon that, even should a president issue the
one-word order, “Win!,” our initial actions would be cautious and halting.
We’ve bred a generation of military leaders afraid of being prosecuted by their
own government for the kind of errors inevitable in wartime. Instead of
“leaning forward in the foxhole,” our leaders lean on lawyers.

If
lawyers had had to approve our World War II target lists, we couldn’t have won.
War is never clean or easy, and the strictures imposed on our military today
just protect our enemies. Collateral damage and civilian casualties are part of
combat and always will be. The most humane approach is to pile on fast and win
decisively — which results in far less suffering than the sort of protracted
agony we see in Syria.

What does Russia want? Goldman suggests that Putin is not
playing Iran’s game:

The
Iranian-backed irregulars have been singularly ineffective in taking territory
back from ISIS, however, compared for example to the Kurds, by far the most
effective fighting force on the ground. Russia and its allies probably will
solve the problem by sending in ground forces. ISIS cannot stand up to the
combination of a modern ground army with close air support. That will devalue
Iran’s contribution to the military effort and its ability to influence a
future political outcome. Russia wants to win the war on the ground and control
the terms of the peace without interference from the apocalyptic adventurers in
Iran.

Goldman closes by noting that China has its own problem with
radicalized Muslims. Its interests are slightly different from Russia’s and
America’s but it will surely want to become a player in the Middle East. And
note the importance of humiliating ISIS, point recently made by Marco Rubio and
argued on this blog for years:

For all
these reasons, China has a deep interest in the defeat of ISIS. It has as much
reason to fear the metastasis of Sunni jihad as does Russia, as well as the
quiet support for the jihadists coming from Istanbul and some elements in Saudi
Arabia. A humiliation of the self-styled Islamist Caliphate would crush the
morale of its emulators in China as well as Russia, and Beijing will find ways
of supporting Putin’s efforts without any direct or visible commitment of
military resources.

As for
France: several days ago I wrote that France will
do nothing in response to the Paris massacre. I may have been wrong.
Russia will do a great deal, and in consequence, France will do more than round
up the usual suspects.

One appreciates that Goldman has corrected himself on this
point. Many others, when they find out that they have erred, just double down
on the error.

5 comments:

But when terrorists attack Assad(hated by the US and Israel), there is a tendency to watch 'barbarians fight barbarians'.

When NATO took out Gaddafi, US even sided with terrorist elements and called them 'freedom fighters' and 'democracy activists'. And when they moved to Syria to blow things up, the West idly watched as Assad's regime was threatened.

So, War on Terror can easily become War with Terror.

US policy is messed up because it wants to fight terror against the West but blithely tolerates terror against its perceived enemies. But ISIS that is attacking Assad today could attack Europe or US tomorrow.

It looks like Hillary has decided to take sides against Obama's "strategic patience"http://time.com/4120896/hillary-clinton-paris-attacks-isis-speech/-----------During a Q&A in Turkey Monday, Obama said he wasn’t going to take action against ISIS simply because it would “make America look tough, or make me look tough,” and compared critics to people who “want to pop off” on the issue.

By contrast, Clinton struck a more assertive tone in her speech.

“Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, but to defeat and destroy ISIS,” she said. “And we should be honest about the fact that, to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.”-----------

So if the Republicans want to differentiate themselves from the Democrats, they'll have hope Sanders somehow wins the nomination. It's still not impossible.

How many republicans have been calling for ground forces so far?

At least calling Obama an amateur is more polite way to provoke him than calling him chicken, although I'd go more with the second than the first.

Who wants to end his presidency by starting World War III against a billion Muslims?

Hillary however, is ready to step up to the plate and then she'll have 8 years to clean up the world, if we're patient enough for the lame duck to leave.

On local sad news I just heard that my friend's cousin committed suicide this week. He was 27, a Marine. I might have met him, but didn't know him. Still that might be the closest I've come to a military death, unless you count cancer from smoking. Not even my parent or grandparent sibling generations had any combat deaths in WW2, Korea or Vietnam.http://www.startribune.com/obituaries/detail/110629/?fullname=william-macgregor-shaw

I helped out at a Veteran's day 5k race last week, and one of the volunteers helps soldiers adjust back to civilian life. I've never talked politics with him.

We're just there to keep people physically active, not decide which presidential candidates are amateurs and which are the real deal.